


Dreaming of Escape

by DictionaryWrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Escape, Gen, The Eye (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:16:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Tim wants out.It doesn't seem to make a difference.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

He knew, of course, that it wouldn’t work.

He knew it while he was walking through the crowded streets of Tokyo, ignoring the people that looked with fascination to the big, tall gaijin with the scars on his face and his neck, until a pretty girl touched his arm and asked for a picture, and then he’d be all smiles, he’d laugh, would use the little Japanese he had until he went home with her until he’d mapped every plane of her body with his mouth and his lips.

<strike>(And his eyes. He would try to keep them closed, but it didn’t actually make a difference, although he tried to ignore it, the pictures, the _knowledge_—)</strike>

Later, he would still be hungry.

It would gnaw at him as he laid crammed into a bed far too small for him, laid on his stomach with his face pressed into the pillow, his hands fisted too tightly in his own hair.

He knew it wouldn’t work.

He knew it a ways outside of Sofia, his hands in his pockets as he followed a tour guide around and didn’t listen to her talk about the monastery, about the monks. He knew it when he saw a figure down the hill, a too-tall, too-limby figure that blended into the trees, and all he felt was _hunger_, no fear at all.

He knew it when he finally stumbled back up the steps toward the Institute, weak and sick and pale no matter that he’d just spent weeks under hot sun without sun cream, and the mere _shadow_ of the fucking place made him feel better. He hated it, of course, but he hated it like he hated the taste of cough syrup – it was disgusting, infuriating that he had to take it in, but it would make him feel better…

He tuned out Elias’ lecture, and Jon’s surprise. He stayed for three more weeks, until he wasn’t quite so thin, and then tried again.

\--

Fucking helped.

He didn’t care that Martin sometimes made a face, like he couldn’t decide whether to be in awe or to be disgusted. He didn’t care that Jon didn’t get it at all, that he probably stored his cock somewhere in a dusty box, unused and forgotten. He didn’t care that Elias—

Best not to think about Elias. It’d only stop him sleeping.

But it did help, to seduce people. It wasn’t the same as working, as researching, as getting information out of people, but it was something. The gnawing hunger lingered, but the edge was taken off, because he was peeling away the layers that hid someone and getting to what was underneath.

He liked people.

He liked to know where you could touch them, to make them let out noises they didn’t know they could make; he liked to know what made them shiver or moan or cry; he liked to know what could push them over the edge, when they were right on it, or shove them back from it, if he wanted to be cruel.

Little details helped. The way someone took their coffee; someone’s favourite colour, cocktail, kind of shoe; the things that they were frightened of. The things that made them walk faster, more desperate to get home, when they thought about them after dark. The things that made people shiver and huddle more closely under their blankets, even though the lights were on.

People told him things they didn’t mean to.

He’d always been disarming, charming, but it was different now – people told him things as though he’d turned a tap on their mouth, and it flowed off their tongue like honey, like wine, until he swallowed it down. He didn’t have to ask questions, even, sometimes.

People turned to him on buses, or in coffee shops, or in the queue at the post office, and told him things they’d probably never dreamt of telling anybody. It wasn’t spooky stuff, for the most part, funnily enough. They didn’t tell him about monsters they’d seen, or that had come for them – they told him things they regretted, or things that had hurt them, or things that made them feel euphoric, or things that had made them feel ecstasy.

That took the edge off, too.

No one had turned to him in a few days.

He thought it was proximity to the Institute that did it – the effect always lingered for a little while, but once that aura began to fade, once the Institute didn’t cling to his clothes, his skin, whatever it was that made people want to talk to him, want to tell him everything, faded too. He didn’t know…

He didn’t know what to call it. He was pretty sure Sasha had never felt like this, but then, how would he know, when _that thing_—

And Jon, Jon had something like it, but for Jon, it was the statements, on paper or from people, and it wasn’t like that, for Tim. He’d even tried, once or twice, sitting down and reading a statement, even reading one aloud with a tape recorder running, but he’d never felt any different, afterward.

He had been away from the Institute, this time around, for eighteen days.

He woke up on his back, staring up at the mirrored ceiling, his eyes half-lidded, his mouth twisted. He’d slept with magicians last night, a pair of them, and it had made him laugh, the tricks they could do, the both of them free and easy and full of laughter, until one of them had fallen asleep, and the other had lain on Tim’s chest and told him, sleepily, that he seemed so sad for a guy in Las Vegas, and suggested that maybe he should go home.

Tim was hungry, and tired, and his joints ached. When he looked up at his body on the mirror above his head, it was starting to get _thin_, the muscles on his abdomen and his pecs looking uncomfortably defined, as though someone had made the lines between them with a scalpel, instead of—

_Sculpted_. That was how he liked to look.

Not cut.

He’d have to go back to the Institute.

He could feel it, feel that if he stayed away for too much longer, the dizziness and the aching and the exhaustion would get _worse_, until he died, wasted away. The funny thing was, he didn’t even think much about food, anymore – oh, he ate, now and then, when he remembered, but it didn’t do what it used to.

“What do I have to do?” he asked, his voice hoarse and husky from lack of sleep, and he stared up into his own eyes in the mirror, trying not to sigh. “I don’t want to be… I don’t want to go back to the Institute. Let me _go_.”

His body throbbed. It made a wave of nausea run from the base of his gut all the way up to his throat, and he groaned, clapping his hand over his mouth, staring up at his own body in the mirror, laid out, alone, in a too-big bed, on filthy sheets.

“I hate it there,” he mumbled, swallowing hard. “I hate how… fucking _dark_ it is, how Elias is always stalking around, how Martin is always _there_, desperate for someone to… That happened to Sasha, and none of us noticed. It could happen to me too – why should I let it? I don’t want to be there. What the _fuck_ do I have to do for you to let me _leave_?”

The shade was pulled down, but there was a bar through the middle of the window with some vague, artistic design on it – the curling iron probably made it harder to crawl out of the window if you managed to break the glass.

The bars cast a shadow that landed in the centre of his chest, slightly bent because of the angle of the light, and looking up at it in the mirror—

It didn’t look like an eye. Not really, not _actually_, but it looked enough like an eye that when Tim looked at it with his own half-lidded and exhausted, his brain filling in the gaps. He saw it as though it had been painted there with black ink, almond-shaped with a disc-shaped pupil, with the eyelashes that could have been rays of light, as much as eyelashes. Almost like a tattoo.

“What,” Tim asked, “like Gerard Keay?”

The eye… blinked.

It made him shock, gasping and jumping up from the bed, tumbling off the mattress and hitting the rug on the floor hard, groaning, coughing. He lay there, sprawled on his stomach, for longer than he’d care to mention.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ll get his,” said the man next to him in the queue, and Tim turned to look at him in surprise.

The man was… short. His head was level with Tim’s chest, and he wore a polo neck jumper, a gillet over top of it, the sleeves rolled up: his arms were muscular and toned, barely dusted with hair, and his skin had a beautiful colour to it, a sort of rich, golden brown, the healthy skin of a man who spent a lot of time in sunlight. His hair was black and straight, combed loosely back from his face in an easy wave, and he was handsome. Thin, but handsome – a good bone structure.

“Thanks,” Tim said, because he wasn’t about to turn down a free coffee from a man with good bone structure any day, but especially not on a day like this one.

The man did not smile. He looked up at Tim, and his eyes, which were a kind of flinty grey, flitted over Tim’s face. His expression was impassive, and distant, somehow. “Sit with me,” he said quietly. “Won’t you?”

They sat beside the window, and Tim sipped at his coffee, watching the other man for a long few moments, but the man wasn’t looking at Tim. His faraway gaze was fixated on the sky outside, his expression thoughtful.

“So,” Tim said, “you’re not human.”

That got his attention. The grey gaze shifted back to Tim, and the eyes blinked, slowly. The man had long eyelashes – nice eyelashes.

“You assume because a man buys you coffee that he isn’t human?” the man asked, taking a deliberate sip from his own mug.

“I wouldn’t have, once,” Tim said, shrugging his shoulders and leaning back in his seat. “But, and I know that this is probably _hard to believe_, but most humans are kind of put-off when they see a man with scars like these ones. Some people try to convince themselves that they’re acne scars, but normal people, mostly… Normal people know there’s something off about them.”

“You aren’t ugly,” the man said, his lips pressing into a small frown, and Tim laughed. It was a bitter sound.

“Didn’t say I was,” he said. “I’m still hot. I’m just… off. People are funny with me, don’t always want to be intimate unless they’re feeling like taking the risk. Normal people aren’t like _you_, and they’re not like me either, anymore.”

The man nodded his head, slowly, thoughtfully. He didn’t look as if sipping coffee was new to him – he did it naturally, and normally, and he looked like he was used to it. He looked into the mug, swilled it idly, to watch the cream swirl in the coffee. Tim wondered what he saw in it.

“You know,” the man said, “you make yourself vulnerable, when you take these trips away from your Institute. You become weaker, more prone to illness, and you lose what protections your patron gives you – and for what? What is it that you gain, from hurting yourself like that?”

He sounded genuinely _curious_. As if it mattered. As if anything mattered.

This wasn’t exactly what Tim wanted to hear, the day he had to crawl back to work, feeling sick to his stomach and nauseated to Hell, his whole body feeling weak and tired and half-dead. And the worst part was that even though all he wanted to do was _sleep_, when he walked into the Institute, he knew he wouldn’t feel up for sleeping.

He’d do some research, first, wouldn’t be able to stop himself for _hours_—

And that would make him feel better.

Healthier.

“The… Eye, Beholding, whatever. It’s evil. It’s evil, and everything I do in that place just… helps it. It wants to know stuff and listen to conversations, and everything we give it helps it do whatever it is it wants to do, and I’m sick and tired of it. And I’m tired of things like _you_, too.”

“That’s a bit rude,” the man said. “I’ve never done anything to hurt you.”

“Been watching me, though, haven’t you?” Tim asked, demanded, although he didn’t raise his voice. “Stalking doesn’t really put anybody in my good books.”

“You’re getting talked about,” the man said simply, with a shrug of rugged shoulders. “People are curious about what you’ll do next. You say that your patron is evil, and yet you’re going to return to it. Is it because you’re frightened of dying?”

“Are you?” Tim asked, and the man looked pensive for a moment, his head tilting as he considered the question.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “but fear isn’t the same for me as it used to be. Maybe I am, and I just don’t recognise it anymore – that’s perfectly possible, I suppose.”

“I’m not frightened of dying,” Tim said. “I’d just… rather not die like this. Get weaker and weaker until I just…” He gestured, but then he closed his eyes, because a wave of nausea hit him all at once, leaning to press his forehead against the back of his thumb, breathing in deeply and slowly. “But I guess I shouldn’t tell you, anyway, right? Because you’re probably out to kill me?”

“I’m not,” the man said pleasantly. He had a nice voice. Tim hadn’t slept in days, and it was the sort of voice that might have lulled him to sleep, if he were capable of that, at this point. “I was… curious.”

“You’re… You’re not one of us, are you? Of, um…?”

“Beholding? No. I toyed with the idea,” the man admitted, in a casual tone, as though it were a normal thing to consider, as if people flicked through potential monsters to trap themselves with as though they were looking at unis to go to. “But I’m not actually very curious by nature. It’s only now and then.”

The smell of ozone didn’t hit him in the face or anything – it wasn’t sudden, or aggressive. He thought it had been there all along, just that he only really noticed now, for some reason. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant smell.

“You’re Michael Crew.”

“Yes.”

“That— I mean, you were Michael Crew. The entity formally known as Michael Crew.”

“I’m still known as Michael Crew. It says it on my passport. I prefer Mike, though.”

“Why do you use a passport?”

“Same reason you do.”

“Can’t you just— I don’t know, fly places yourself?”

“I suppose I could, but imagine the complaints from Air Traffic Control.”

Tim laughed. It was a low noise, kind of fell out of his mouth without him meaning to let it, and when he opened his eyes again, the wave of nausea mostly having passed, Mike Crew was smiling just slightly.

“I suppose you don’t feel guilty anymore,” Tim said. “Did you ever?”

“I think perhaps I still do,” Mike said, still with that pensive tone, as though it was all some great, intellectual exercise. “I never really remember feeding my god, after it’s done. Perhaps that’s my way of protecting myself.”

“But you kill people,” Tim said. “You _kill_ them.”

“I think that’s why I’m so curious,” Mike admitted. “You _don’t_ kill people. What have you got to feel guilty about?”

“Why does it matter to you?”

“Because I don’t know what you will do next,” Mike said. “I imagine the desire to know strikes a chord with you.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” Tim asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Rumour has it your patron is giving you options,” Mike said. “That isn’t very common, you know. I suppose my suggestion would be to make a choice.”

“When two choices are both evil, why pick one?”

“I suppose the natural answer is to choose the lesser evil,” Mike murmured, swilling his coffee again. “But as you can imagine, this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“You’re sort of hot,” Tim said. “For a monster.”

“Thank you,” replied Mike Crew. “I’d return the compliment, but you’re not enough of a monster just yet.”

“And if I was?”

“I’d sleep with you immediately,” Mike said. His lips were quirked into a little smile, a curve that was neat and defined and made Tim’s roiling stomach settle, even as he laughed again. “Being a monster doesn’t mean being entirely inhuman, you know.”

Tim thought about Danny. His stomach roiled anew.

“Maybe not always,” Tim said. “But sometimes is more than enough.”

\--

A walk-in tattoo was more expensive than he expected.

Every punch of the needle under his skin made the nausea recede further, and by the time the eye was firmly imprinted on his sternum, open, all-seeing, he felt well-rested in a way he hadn’t felt in weeks.

“All done,” the tattooist said, smiling. “Now, aftercare—"

“Slow day, isn’t it?” Tim asked, thinking about the empty waiting room.

“I suppose,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

“I want another one.”

She stared at him, her lips parted. “Listen—”

“Tell me about yourself,” Tim said, and he smiled his charming, patented Stoker smile, watched her blink, watched her cheeks flush. She was moving automatically as Tim rolled up his sleeves, giving her space to work on his forearms, his head _rushing_ with the sheer wonder of feeling like he wasn’t on the verge of dropping dead.

She told him.

It didn’t feel less evil than anything else. He didn’t see how it could.

By the time she was done – by the time he let her finish – they were all over him. On his sternum, over each of his shoulder blades, on his forearms, on his upper arms facing out, over his thighs, over his calves. She looked dizzy, after. Dizzy, and disbelieving, when she reached out to touch Tim’s chest with still gloved fingers, brushing them over black ink that had neatly settled into the skin, no blow-outs, no reddening, looking for all the world as though she’d put it there months ago.

_He_ felt…

Strong.

Perhaps that was why she clambered into his lap, kissed him, and he let her, let his hands slide over her body, devoured every noise she made, every movement of her body, every thought she blurted out without meaning to, because the floodgates were open, and he would drink every drop.

Mike Crew met him in the street, after.

“Dinner?” he asked. When Tim blinked at him (_<strike>and felt the others blink, too</strike>)_, he said, “The human kind.”

“I didn’t realize I reminded you of Gerard Keay,” Tim said.

“You didn’t,” Mike murmured. “Not until now.”

“Let’s skip dinner,” Tim said, and Mike Crew nodded, slowly, thoughtfully.

“Your place or mine?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr.](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) Requests open.
> 
> I have a Magnus Archives discord! [Join here!](https://discord.gg/c9aZWDz)


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